The intent of this article is to encourage students to pursue academic degrees, including doctoral work, in spite of the difficulties they will encounter. My 1998 doctoral dissertation The Impact of Reformation on the Romanian People from 1517 to 1648 was foundational in other academic works that I have done. It was translated into Romanian and printed twice.

The article details the first 15 years of my childhood under the communist regime in Romania and what it meant to encounter a communist education whose goal was to create a new cadre of dedicated communists. It also briefly describes the 18 months I spent in a refugee camp and my education in the United States via Wheaton College (BA), Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (MDiv), Princeton Theological Seminary (ThM) and Trinity University (PhD). All along, God enabled me to pursue my degrees by placing people in my life who encouraged me and connected me to sources for my international research.

I end the article by attaching the conclusion of my dissertation. I hope it will serve as an invitation to continue the discussion that I have started because there is still so much work to be done.

Present writing is an ethnological research about the Hungarian evangelical communities of Romanian nationality. Discussing evangelic communities is a very sensitive topic in Romanian ethnology. Indeed, their world is very different then the one following the more traditional Romanian way. But if we keep in mind that the first Baptist community on Romanian land was created in 1856, and the first Baptist church in Romanian language was founded in 1886, there is no doubt that these communities have stabilized their own tradition, customs, their own cultural specific cultural code, and an especially rich narrative over the past 130 years. I believe, that Romanian evangelists as an important cultural field, and researching this field could lead to useful conclusions about contemporary society, or in re-evaluating the past. In conclusion, in my attempt to research these evangelic communities, first of all those Baptists, I would like to use ethnology and oral history as my tools.

Due to the fact that the Reformers promoted and upheld the principle of the primacy of the Sacred Scripture in place of Tradition, which, in these circumstances, meant a true spiritual revolution in the interpretation of the holy text, in the sense of placing the Holy Scriptures first, considered to be the divine revelation given to the sinful man, thus constituting the only rule regarding the act of faith and the way of Christian living. Throughout our study we present the way in which the reformer Martin Luther interpreted the biblical text according to the scholastic hermeneutical rules of his time as well as the new hermeneutical principles adopted by him and presented according to Professor Wilhelm Moldovan’s vision.

The Protestant music, with its riches and contradictions, had a major impact upon religious music at the time of Reformation. The theology of Reformation is found in the development of Protestant music in relation to exstasy, symbolism, and rhetoric. Also, the estetics of Protestant music released from its spiritual essence is strongly linked to the patterns and order of God's creation. The power of Protestant music brings transformation and cleansing in huma life leading to instruction and change. The extatic dimension of Protestant music, as a subliminal reaction vis-a-vis movement and rythm, leads the listener to transformation. There is a strong link between the ideology of Reformation and the formation of lutheran chorus and Protestant hymnology. The mystical dimension of Protestant music represents a symbol of the great, infinite pattern of God's creation.

The context in which the Church carries out its mission at the beginning of this millennium gives us a dual image of a disintegrating world, prone to divisions, and yet having a desire for unity and harmony. This unity and harmony within the Church is all the more important as they depend on the successful completion of the mission of the Church.

Defining and understanding the Church's mission in the present context is particularly important because the Church was not brought into existence by God through Christ and the Holy Spirit, just to be an end in itself. In the present article it is highlighted that the attitude or disposition with which the Church fulfills its mission is of particular importance.

Permanently available for ministry, the Church does not seek to dominate society nor to fulfill its goals, however, it adapts its work without altering/deviating from the main given direction. Note, God has never demanded ‘heated’, thrilling, and crowded church programs! What God wants from His people and Church, is to know Him more closely. In order to accomplish this, we need a complete reform in worship, edification, evangelism and preparation, which in many cases has been confined to ‘arid’ formalities, lacking the essence.